LZ UlCk INFORMATION SERIES 


AMERICAN BAPTIST 


BENGAL 


1. The Field 


HE field of the Bengal Mission is in the 
Province of Bengal, and comprises the 
two districts, Midnapore and Balasore, 
the latter lying in the Orissa division 
of the province. This mission, for- 
merly the Free Baptist Mission, is now 
under the direction of the American 
Baptist Foreign Mission Society 
through the merging of the missionary 
work of Free Baptists and Baptists. 
The Midnapore district begins across 
the Hoogly River from Calcutta and extends nearly one hun- 
dred and fifty miles along the Bay of Bengal, to the south- 
west. A small portion lying along the Hoogly River, com- 
prising Tamluk, has been ceded to the Methodists as their 

‘mission field. The Balasore district is south of the Midnapore 
district and extends about one hundred miles further south. 
A large part of the district west of Balasore, known as the 
Mohurbunge, also properly belongs to this division, as our 
missionaries tour through it, and no other mission is working 
the territory, save at one remote point. 

The whole area consists of more than seven thousand square 
miles, with a population considerably exceeding four millions. 
Midnapore and Balasore, in their respective districts, are the 
largest cities, of about 40,000 and 30,000 inhabitants respec- 
tively. Small villages average about three to each two square 
miles, with more than 500 inhabitants to each square ‘mile. 
Rice is the main crop raised, although peas, beans, sweet 


potatoes, bananas, mangoes, cotton, sugar cane, tobacco 
and oil seeds are also cultivated. Tropical conditions pre- 
vail, as the northern boundary of the field is but twenty-two 
degrees north of the equator. 


2. The People 


The four millions of population are chiefly Hindus, with 
a large admixture of Mohammedans, especially in the Mid- 
napore district. In the northwest, chiefly among the hills, is 
an aboriginal tribe, the Santals, numbering about 150,000. 
Four languages are spoken, Bengali in the Midnapore dis- 
trict, Oriya in the Balasore district and the Mohurbunge, 
Hindi largely by the Mohammedans and Santali by the San- 
tals. The work of the mission is conducted, however, almost 
exclusively through the Bengali in the north and the Oriya 
in the south. Even the Santals are reached through the 
Bengali, as the government requires them to receive all 
school instruction in Bengali. Caste restrictions are rigor- 
ously observed. Women are largely secluded. Little girls 
are betrothed and married and sometimes widowed before 
entering their teens. Society is honeycombed with super- 
stition and immorality. 


3. Beginnings of Mission Work 


The mission was opened in 1835. Rev. Amos Sutton, a 
missionary of the English Baptists at Puri, near Cuttack, 
about 200 miles southwest of Calcutta, had married the widow 
of James Colman, one of Adoniram Judson’s early associates 
in Burma. Mr. and Mrs. Sutton were greatly burdened for 
the millions of heathen souls about them and desired helpers. 
Mrs. Sutton, an American Baptist, supposed her own people 
had all they could care for in maintaining the mission in 
Burma, but she thought that possibly the Free Baptists 
might be enlisted in missionary enterprise. She suggested 
this to her husband. He wrote a letter, addressed to Free 
Baptists, designed for publication in the Morning Star, but 
neither he nor his wife knew the address of this paper. Con- 
sequently the letter was pigeon-holed, and lay, at length 
forgotten, for several months, until a day when a package 
sent out from England was discovered to have, as one of its 


wrappings, an old copy of the Morning Star. Here was the 
desired address, The letter was quickly drawn from its 
pigeon-hole and despatched across the sea. 

That letter was printed in the Morning Star April 13, 1832. 
As a result, in the following January the Free Will Baptist 
Foreign Mission Society was organized; and in 1834, when 
Mr. and Mrs. Sutton left India on furlough, they came to 
America. Fora year Mr. Sutton served as the corresponding 
secretary of the new society, and a fund of nearly $3,000 was 
raised. While serving in this capacity, Mr. Sutton addressed 
his brethren of the Baptist churches, and won their support 
also for the work in India, so that when he and his wife sailed 
from Boston in September, 1835, there sailed with them 
Rev. and Mrs. Jeremiah Phillips and Rev. and Mrs. Eli 
Noyes, representing Free Baptists, and Rev. and Mrs. 
Samuel Stearns Day, representing Baptists, the latter to 
begin that famous and wondrously successful work among 
the Telugus of South India. 

In the beginning, therefore, Baptist and Free Baptist 
missionary work in India was indissolubly linked through 
an English Baptist and his American wife and a chain of 
circumstances, which cannot be regarded as fortuitous, but 
must be recognized as providential. 


4. The Stations 


At Midnapore, seventy miles west of Calcutta, in addition 
to regular evangelistic and zenana work, a boys’ school, a 
girls’ school and a Bible school, for the training of native 
preachers, are maintained. 

Bhimpore, twenty miles northwest of Midnapore, is a 
station for Santals. Besides schools for boys and girls and 
much outstation work, there is the Sterling Memorial Hospital. 

Khargpur is an important railroad town rapidly growing. 
An English church for Eurasians is prosperous, and the work 
for natives, who come in large numbers from various partsof 
India, is particularly promising, because the people so largely 
break loose from the fetters of caste in their new surroundings. 

Contai, for some time under an efficient native superin- 
tendent, includes evangelistic and educational work, and also 
maintains a dispensary. 


Jellasore, once the residence of a missionary, is now the 
center of several village schools and some outstation work. 

Santipore has schools for boys and girls, an industrial 
school where weaving, carpentry and iron work are taught, 

_a dispensary, a native village founded on socialistic principles 
and extensive evangelistic features. 

Balasore is the seat of a large boys’ high school, an indus- 
trial school giving instruction in gardening, carpentry, iron 
work, book-binding and shoe-making, a large kindergarten, 
primary grade schools for both boys and girls, a teachers’ 
training school, orphanages for both boys and girls, a woman’s 
hospital and dispensary, a widows’ home, two bookrooms 
and strong evangelistic work. 

Bhadrak is without a missionary at present; its work is 
confined chiefly to a primary school and the itinerating 
efforts of native Bible women and preachers. 

Chandbali, also without a missionary, is under native 
supervision. 

The churches have a membership of about 1,500; there 
are many trustworthy native workers; there are several out- 
stations in which churches and schools are maintained; 
several important centers should soon be occupied by mis- 
sionary families. Three have already been recommended by 
the mission committee to be occupied as soon as present 
stations have been adequately manned. 


Note. All contributions for the work of the Bengal Mis- 
sion, whether from Baptist or Free Baptist churches, should 
be sent to the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. 


Contributions for the work of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society 
may be sent to any of the District Secretaries, or to the Treasurer, 
Ford Building, Boston. 


Address _ the Literature Department, American Baptist Foreign Mission 
Society, Ford Building, Boston, for the following: — 


Extra copies of this leaflet. Price per doz., 5 cents; per hundred, 25 cents. 
** Missions in Bengal,’’ an historical sketch. Price, 10 cents. 

Catalog of Publications. Free. 

The Handbook of the Foreign Mission Society. Price, 20 cents. 

Annual Report of the Foreign Mission Society. Free, on receipt of postage. 


976-1 Ed. 5 M. Dec., tort. 


